/dev/zero

Hmmm. So it seems I haven’t posted at all this month. And MT only show’s the current months postings on the main page. So my page looks rather blank.
Or it did. Now there’s something here. Whee.

So I’ve gotten rather lax about my journal. Excuse me, “blog” as the trendy call it. Now that I live with my parents (read: “People who do NOT spend their entire lives on the computer”) I find I’m becoming one of them (people that don’t spend their entire lives on the computer, that is.) Oh, and there’s other places in this house to do things like, oh, sit down and read a book. Or sit down and eat a meal. The last place I lived, the only place you could sit down was in front of the computers. But I won’t go there right now. I can’t anyway. That’s 1500 miles away.

So my car insurance payment was past due. Mom kept reminding me to let her know how much it was and what not so she could pay it for me (my parents picking up the tab for pretty much everything right now. Yay parents!) I couldn’t find the bill, so I logged into GEICO’s online system. Of course it had this little reminder in red that my payment is late and my policy is pending cancelation. Since the online payment system uses a virtual check, and I’m not authorized to sign checks on my parents accounts (and I would assume they would try to process it under my name, even if my parents did authorize me to use their checking account for this purpose), I called them to see if I could make a payment at the local office, and if so, how much time do I have before my policy is actually canceled. Good thing I did. Call it karma or something, but as of midnight tonight, my policy would have canceled. Luckily they can take a credit card over the phone, so I handed the phone to Dad who took care of it for me. Yay Dad! ‘Course I’ll have to pay them back when I have income again…

So, some brief observations about life in Texas, now that I’ve been here for… 3 weeks, 33 minutes.

To quote the great Robin Williams: “It’s hot. DAMN hot! Crotchpot cooking hot! The other day I saw one of those little guys in orange robes burst into flames!”
Ok, I didn’t see anyone burst into flames and when you think about it, that joke is pretty tasteless. But it is pretty friggin hot here. In the high 90’s every day, and with the hummidity the “heat index” is over 100F every day. I guess “heat index” is sort of like “wind chill factor”, only it makes things feel hotter than the actual temp, rather than colder. Something to do with the hummidity, which is also annoying.

The roads around here are wierd. For one thing, Texas seems to like to make all their traffic lights horizontal. Dunno why, they just are. And there’s almost never a line on the pavement to tell you where to stop. Sure, there’s a stop sign on the corner, but no line saying WHERE to stop. And since they like these nice ROUND corners, sometimes it’s hard to tell where the intersection begins and you’ve gone too far. Ok, not really, but it is erie how there’s no line saying where to stop. Oh, and they don’t like asphalt very much. Surface streets are all concrete. Dunno why. I’d think with this heat, asphalt would be good. Or maybe it gets too soft when it’s this hot all the time?
On the other hand, at least in the parts of town where I drive, they seem to do a better job of maintaining their roads. Less potholes and so on. Something to do with the fact that the road is concrete instead of asphault? But the wierdest, and coolest, thing yet about Texas roads: every freeway has a frontage road running parallel. So if you’re only going a couple miles (say, less than 10), you can just take the frontage road without actually getting on the freeway. It goes straight through like the freeway does, except you have to stop at lights, but it’s at least 2 lanes and the only other traffic is other people who are also in a hurry, so it’s pretty quick. And at every intersection they have this really funky lane that allows you to make a left turn and reverse direction onto the frontage road on the other side of the freeway going the other way, without having to wait at the light. If you actually want to make a left onto the road at that intersection, you take the middle lane and wait for a left turn like always, but if you want to turn around and go the other way, you get in the left lane and just loop around under the freeway overpass and go. Really nifty. I can see where that really comes in handy if you miss your freeway exit. No prob, just get off at the next exit, stay in the left lane, take the u-turn lane and come back one exit on the frontage road, without every having to wait for a light. Tres cool.

Grocery stores: They’re all friggin HUGE! This is Texas. They like things BIG. I’d say the average grocery store has about 2x the square footage of the average California store, and California stores are pretty good sized. The bonus, however, is that they also make the aisles pretty wide, so there’s no squeezing past another shopper in a tiny little space.
But probably the biggest difference I’ve noticed about Texas is a very subtle one: everyone thinks of Texas as being very conservative, “Southern” and all that. Well, yeah, it is a bit more conservative than California, but in the old-time deffinition of “conservative”. As in what you do is your business, except when it interferes with someone else. It’s still Bible Belt and peoples outward attitudes on some subjects will show that. But it’s also a self-reliant, mind your own business place.
But it’s also conservative in one other way, and this is the subtle thing I was talking about above: business still believe in customer service. It’s the little things. At the grocery store, they don’t expect you to unload your own cart onto the counter so the clerk can scan it. They make the counter such that your cart goes past the clerk and THEY unload it for you. I can’t think of any other examples right now, but I’ve noticed this general attitude of “take care of the customer” here in Texas, more than I would in California. Old time manners.

Anyway, off to bed. I have to be up really early tomorrow.

Here I like close to the grave
Of Old Bill Piersol
Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who
Afterwards took the bankrupt law
And emerged richer than ever.
Myself grown tired of toil and poverty
And beholding how Old Bill and others grew in wealth,
Robbed a traveler one night near Proctor’s Grove,
Killing him unwittingly while doing so,
For the which I was tried and hanged.
That was my way of going into bankruptcy.
Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways
Sleep peacfully side by side.

Hod Putt

Spoon River Anthology

Edgar Lee Masters